Lots Of Oil

Half the oil in the world is right under here...

This past week an auditor for the General Accounting Office in Washington, DC appeared before the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment and spoke on energy and in particular The Green River Formation-an assemblage of rock that lies beneath parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  Anu K. Mittel, the GAO's director of natural resources, stated that this area contained the world's largest deposit of oil shale.  She stated that the US Geological Survey has estimated that this area contains three trillion barrels of oil, half of which is recoverable.  This is an amount equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves.


Wow.  The amount of oil in the whole world just doubled this past week and half of it is right here in the United States.  But wait, there's more good news.  Most of this oil is located underneath land owned by the federal government.  Double wow.  We all know how efficient and fast acting the federal government is, so it's not going to be long and all of our energy problems will be solved.


But wait,  I seem to recall something a famous economist by the name of Milton Friedman once said..."If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand".


Oops.